Fork oil question

[Dow Jones]

Originally Posted by MELK-MAN

so you had it serviced, and now no matter what something doesn't feel right regardless of settings?

Yeah no matter what settings I choose I can barely bounce the front end. Its very very stiff. Fully open fully closed it makes no difference to the ride. I compared mine to a friend of mine today and its obvious something is very wrong with my forks. On his I can easily bounce the front end.

Unfortunately I did the forks myself so I'm going to be tearing them apart again. I used the fork oil level tool that came with the traxxion kit but it could be that I measured wrong and there is too much oil in the forks.

[Dow Jones]

Originally Posted by mercenary

I appreciate that, the fact that you expected to get awesome dampening out of turning the valves all the way open is astounding. What exactly did you expect by opening them all the way? Did you expect a refresh to allow you to use no dampening at all?

No I wasn't expecting to get awesome dampening I was just trying to go to the extreme and see if there was any difference as right now the forks are screwed up. I have a problem with my forks that I'm trying to locate, once the problem is solved I can then hopefully fine tune them.

[Dow Jones]

Originally Posted by DanQ

What year bike?

How many clicks are on each of the damping adjusters right now (still full open (counterclockwise) or what?

05 R6. Right now I have the compression and rebound in the absolute middle of their adjustments. Maybe I have too much fork oil. I used the syringe from traxxion to remove the fork oil to the level that I thought was 92mm but maybe my measurement was off.

[mercenary]

Originally Posted by Dow Jones

No I wasn't expecting to get awesome dampening I was just trying to go to the extreme and see if there was any difference as right now the forks are screwed up. I have a problem with my forks that I'm trying to locate, once the problem is solved I can then hopefully fine tune them.

Understandable then, it came across that you expected to be able to set them open after the refresh.

[DanQ]

Originally Posted by Dow Jones

05 R6. Right now I have the compression and rebound in the absolute middle of their adjustments. Maybe I have too much fork oil. I used the syringe from traxxion to remove the fork oil to the level that I thought was 92mm but maybe my measurement was off.

I usually start at about 110mm from the top on that year, and I also make sure I extend the upper tube about 3.5 inches then bottom it again before measuring to make sure I have most of the oil in the inner tube and not the space in between them. I then repeat the process. My track bike I'm currently running about 130 mm air gap, but will probably change a few things next go around because I'm trail braking near to the apex of a corner and not really fond of doing that.

The damping adjustments being about middle is a decent starting point on this model year, so leave it be. Also, with the stock pistons in place, I would recommend 5wt Maxima or even lighter if you can find it. The ports are extremely small and a thicker oil may not flow as well.

But my opinion is your air gap is causing most of your issue.

[Dow Jones]

Thanks for the tip. i'm going to give it a shot.

[diz]

I don't know if you fixed the problem but just wanted to make sure you were measuring the oil without the springs in the tube. Most of the filling heights for that tool are without the springs.